- “Dungeons & Dragons” is now a 50-year-old game.
- It’s undergoing a major facelift, with new core rulebooks being released through next year.
- BI spoke to a Wizards of the Coast executive to hear how the company is trying to keep “D&D” hot.
For half a century, the game of “Dungeons & Dragons” has been a cornerstone of the nerdy experience.
The tabletop game allows people to tell stories in groups, with turns of the narrative being decided by the roll of a 20-side die. It’s gotten diehard fans like Tesla chief Elon Musk hooked. And it’s also made the company that owns it, Wizards of the Coast, a lot of money.
Fifty years on, WOTC is now part of the gaming juggernaut that is Hasbro. And “D&D” continues to reap the rewards it needs for its parent company to keep investing.
According to the company’s third-quarter earnings, the new “Player’s Handbook” released in September is “D&D’s” fastest-selling product in its 50-year history, beating its internal expectations by 50%.
Chris Cocks, Hasbro’s CEO, said during an October earnings call that the company’s acquisition of D&D Beyond, an electronic platform on which players can create and view their game characters, is paying off and “driving ‘D&D’s’ total mix of direct-to-consumer revenue from zero at the time of acquisition, to 60% today.”
Hasbro did not break out revenue specifically for “D&D,” but per the earnings call, the company netted $244 million in adjusted revenue for the three months ending September 29.
Jess Lanzillo, a senior executive at WOTC in charge of product and franchise, told Business Insider how the company intends to keep the game hot for 50 more years, including growth in a key demographic.
Fresh content
WOTC’s plan centers on refreshing D&D’s core content, including rulebooks like the “Player’s Handbook” (PHB), “Monster Manual,” and “Dungeon Master’s Guide.” The “PHB” was released in September and the “DM’s Guide” in November.
“We’ve got new subclasses, new spells, all sorts of new tools and toys to play with,” Lanzillo said of the new “PHB.” WOTC sells the digital and physical bundle of the “PHB” for $59.99.
The game’s fifth edition was released 10 years ago, so 2024’s rules refresh is, essentially, a facelift.
“We wanted to make sure that people didn’t feel like there had to be a hard stop with their old experience and they’ve to throw away that 10 years that has been really important to them,” Lanzillo said.
The “DM’s Guide” — the definitive tool for each “D&D” game’s narrator —has been reworked as well. That rejig was made in consultation with other leaders in the “D&D” space — including Critical Role’s chief creative officer, Matthew Mercer.
Lanzillo added that this version of “DM’s Guide,” which hit stores in early November, is geared toward entry-level game masters learning to tell stories for their friends for the first time.
Branching out
WOTC is also investing in tie-ins with other brands and creators — there’s now a “D&D” movie, the hit video game “Baldur’s Gate 3,” and collabs from Converse shoes to Lego sets.
Lanzillo added that the company’s staff are huge fans of the teams behind Critical Role and Dimension 20, who’ve helped bring “D&D” into the mainstream.
“We love our friends that make cool stuff with ‘D&D,’ and we’re always looking for ways to partner together on stuff,” Lanzillo said.
Lanzillo highlighted one of WOTC’s major ongoing collabs: “The Twenty-Sided Tavern,” an off-Broadway theater production that’s a live, stage-play version of a “D&D” game. The show opened in May and will run through at least April 2025.
David Carpenter, the creator of “Twenty-Sided Tavern,” told BI that the show involves the audience using software to participate in the two-and-a-half-hour-long program.
The audience’s choices affect the show, including what happens to the characters.
“I really wanted to not only make it unique but make it mathematically impossible to be repeated. There are 300,000 possibilities of what could happen at every show,” Carpenter told BI.
“I wanted to build something that you didn’t need to know anything about ‘D&D’ to go in and have a great time, and leave wanting to learn how to play the game,” he said.
“Twenty-Sided Tavern” has brought in some major names from the tabletop gaming space to guest star in its New York run.
Felicia Day, creator of “The Guild,” and Dimension 20’s Aabria Iyengar both had guest runs in the Tavern in September and October.
Erika Ishii, star of the coming video game “Ghost of Yotei,” is slated for a guest run from December 5 through 17.
Catering to digital players
Lanzillo told BI that WOTC customers are evenly split across generations, from baby boomers to Gen Z. Millennials make up a bigger segment of the game’s user set — but Gen Z is the game’s highest growth segment.
So, while old-school “D&D” players may be more inclined to stick with playing in person, Lanzillo also said WOTC has a full slate of digital tools for players. Those include character creation platforms like D&D Beyond, where players can access all the new rules and cook up fresh characters.
WOTC’s upcoming 3D digital sandbox playspace, Project Sigil, is also a “cool 3D tabletop” version of what people might have on the table at home, Lanzillo said.
“We just want to build something that’s as flexible as possible that has some integrated ‘D&D’ mechanics and adventure hooks,” she said.
Project Sigil, which is planned for use across PC, console, and mobile platforms, is now moving into its closed beta phase, which is limited to players in North America.
